On Call Progress Report

We are nearing release now and things are shaping up extremely well!

DONE

• Fixed MANY bugs
• Optimized Turret AI and Draw calls
• Added "Arcade" mode with spaceship AIs for dog fighting in space (The game needed something to do while riding buses and trains... And frankly flying through space is cool and fun.)
• Tweaked timings of end credits
• Tweaked Creep AI
• Tweaked Space AI
• Tweaked Turret AI
• Tweaked Damage
• Tweaked Health
• Tweaked Upgrades
• Added footstep sounds
• Recorded more dialogue for story purposes
• Recorded better sounds for the more lacking ones
• Got LOTS of feedback from testers / friends on several issues that will be looked into
• Added super slow-mo effect to the menu (for pause)

DOING

• The ability to lock the camera in space for more old school players
• More depth to Space AI / Arcade mode
• Collectibles
• Bonuses
• Implement new sounds
• Replace Creep animations with newer, better ones
• Add Sprite on Creep Death
• Add Sound on Creep Death
• General bug fixing
• AI bug fixing

We are going to record some game play soon on the actual Vita in a "lets play" type video, just need to polish up some of the big issues first.

So as you can see, the game is starting to be amazingly polished for (what will be) a 3 week $5 game... We are just polishing and waiting for the paperwork to go through, then we will release as soon as we are satisfied with the production quality.

We cant wait to see what everyone thinks. But for now, here's a look at the new Arcade Mode!

ON CALL Progress Report

So work has slowed down to far less stressful pace while we do paperwork and stuff, which allows us to polish and tweak and test.

We had some friends play test today and got reactions and such from them as to what we sould change and make better.

In response to that I've re-written the Creep AI to be twice as complex as it was, which isn't saying much as it is just simple Creep AI... But still, They will walk around their designated "Hunting ground" minding thier own business and wont pay attention to the player (As they are blind) BUT the moment they feel the warmth of a flashlight they start moving towards the heat and when they hear a gunshot they get angry and charge at twice the speed. Its simple, but it works well for a cheap and simple horde type creep.

Ive tweaked the ending to be better and Im considering cutting the wait time down as I think they player might want to quit out as soon as possible after they are finished... Which is a pity as Id love for them to listen to the beautiful music we've made... But alas, its the players choice haha.

To our surprise, the Half Life style of minimal explanation of objectives has gone down horribly with EVERY SINGLE play test... So, while we will add a small amount of dialogue from the AI to explain the objective and we will add in some HUD for the objectives...

I tweaked the upgrade system to be more fun, helpful and balanced.

And Ive fixed several bugs (mostly with the AI) as well as further optimized performance, stability, graphics and fixed crashes.

ON CALL Progress report

We are officially out of Alpha!!!

What this means is that from here on we are adding as little as possible, but polishing everything that we currently have.

We could release right now, but we need to do some paperwork with Sony first which gives us some time to do some polish and play testing on the PlayStation Vita.

Another aspect is that it gives us time to reach out to people to test and provide us with feedback so we can tweak the game to be better than it currently is.

Its a bit of a buzz kill to slow down and polish after these last 2 weeks of crush, but at the same time, I know that we will benefit A LOT from polishing the game, finding unknown bugs and pushing it even further performance and graphics wise, I mean, we could always use that 1 extra frame on the Vita!

Man we've been really busy these last 2 weeks... We've been working full time 8am-7pm on this protect, and its only me and my brother on this team... I hope all this effort pays off in the long run ;) SO EXCITING!!!

So Close

We are so close we can almost taste it!

DONE

• Side missions
• Upgrades
• Enemy AI
• Turrets
• Health
• Life Support decoration
• all rough levels
• Asteroids and space polish
• Ending
• Optimizations for PlayStation Vita
• Bug kill

DOING

• Final tweaks to health
• More objective markers
• More sounds
• polish / optimize: Bridge, Crew and engine levels
• Collectibles

On Call Progress Report

Spent most of the day optimizing and re-coding most the scripts in order to reduce any lag and reduce the impact on any frame rate drops on controls, as a good example, no one likes it when a games frame-rate drops down and the game goes into an unintended slo-motion, so Ive optimized a lot of that stuff.

A positive outcome for this is that now the game runs well over 60fps in some areas and the minimum frame-rate no longer causes the controls to feel noticeably more weighted.

I've also added 2 buttons in the options menu, one for Performance and one for Quality.

• Performance sacrifices V-sync and anti aliasing for much higher fps.
• Quality locks and V-syncs frame-rate to 30fps, but has 4xMSAA.

Purely because I believe that the player should have the choice to lock the frame-rate to 30fps when confronted with 120-45fps, as some gamers do not like fluctuations in frame-rate (despite how much work I put into making it feel as good as possible at any frame-rate above 30fps) The positive is that when locked down I can afford expensive AA solutions.

(Keep in mind that this is captured off my Dev PC and not the Vita)

ON CALL progress reprort

As you all know we've been working hard on a Vita game for the last 2 weeks.

Progress is slow as we work only on weekdays and there are only 2 of us, 1 to do Coding, level design, props etc and the other to do sound and story.

But we are pleased to show off our latest version of On Call.

Here are some pictures, and we will try to record gameplay from the actual Vita (even if we need to use a hand cam) so you can get a feel for how it looks and plays on there.

On Call Progress report

DONE

• Started adding in main objectives
• Made level transitions almost seamless
• Made player all ways spawn where he should when entering a new level
• Finished both the Life Support and Bridge levels
• Added star-field effect for added sense of movement when flying through space
• Optimized further for 60fps target and Native res on the actual Vita

TO DO

• The Engine and Crew levels
• Enemy AI
• Ship Exterior
• Prop placement on Life Support, Bridge, Crew, Engine and Space levels
• Finish adding main objectives
• Side missions (Both in space and on the ship)
• EXP and Unlocks